Robots in movies: a content analysis of the portrayal of fictional social robots

ABSTRACT

Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots. Congruently, as tools for the dissemination of popular representations of robots, movies can have a direct impact on public perception, acceptance, and discourse about this type of technology. In this article, a content analysis of popular movies and franchises involving (fictional) social robots was conducted (k = 34). With this analysis, we sought to understand a) the main tropes used in movies involving robotic characters, b) the type of human-robot relationships depicted in those movies, and c) how the fictional robots compared with real robots in terms of their abilities. The results suggest that robots tend to be typically depicted in a polarized way that either emphasizes their extreme social abilities or their violent and destructive motives, with the former being slightly more prevalent. As a result, the relations between humans and robots tend to be either friendship or antagonism. Fictional robots are often portrayed as having advanced technical abilities that allow them to navigate multiple complex social settings and engage in different occupations typically performed by humans, in contrast with the abilities held by the most popular commercially available robots we have today.

Highlights

• Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots.

• Social robots tend to be portrayed in a very polarized way.

• Recommendations for future research and robot development are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Movies
• robots
• science fiction
• media

Acknowledgments

CRediT authorship contribution statement Raquel Oliveira: Conceptualization of this study, Methodology, Software. Elmira Yadollahi: Data curation, Writing – Original draft preparation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Retrieved from an interview, available at https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/news/a7074/robots-mankind-future/

2 Movie directed by Jake Schreier, released in 2012.

3 These authors provide the example of Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), in which the '··· question of whether a female robot is considered to have human-like intelligence is left to the judgment of a non-expert man who has been selected based on the fact that he will be sexually attracted to her'. (p. 15)

4 Definition according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robot.

5 https://www.imdb.com/

6 Please see: https://osf.io/nxdhj/?view_only=7b75737899b74217a46f0835e87122fc

7 One of the coders was the first author

8 For more information, consult http://hil.atr.jp/en/index.html.

9 For more information, consult https://www.hansonrobotics.com/bina48-9/.

10 https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2014/october/october29_baymax.html

11 For more information, see https://direct.sony.com/aibo/